Has she gone yet?
No. Maria Miller is still in office. She says she is devastated that she has let down her Basingstoke constituents and that she has given an unreserved apology for her attitude to the parliamentary inquiry into her expenses claims.
Poor dear.
She may very well believe that she has right on her side, but The Times, Telegraph and Independent were not minded to let her off the hook yesterday - and the Guardian and Telegraph are still on her case in Wednesday's papers. The story is becoming one about the Conservative party rather than one member of it. If she lasts that long, which must surely be doubtful, the big test will come at PMQs this lunchtime when Ed Miliband has to decide whether to try to make hay - and risk blowing open the whole expenses scandal again.
There's been a lot of waffle said and written about how the hostile Press coverage of this story is coloured by the desire for revenge over the Leveson fallout and the legalisation of gay marriage.
What the politicos are failing to recognise is that it isn't just the media who are nauseated by the Miller tale; the whole country is. Here is yet another example of the "boss class" thinking that normal rules don't apply to them. It's as though the expenses scandal never happened.
She can protest her innocence til the cows come home - "I stuck to the letter of the law, I made a tiny accounting error, I have nothing to be ashamed of" and suchlike. But, just as we sniff at energy companies that charge us more while recording huge profits and at bankers who reward themselves with multimillion-pound bonuses, we sniff at Miller's behaviour because we think it stinks.
"Who are you to throw stones and talk of greed?" comes the riposte to the scurrilous inky-fingers. "The Prime Minister earns a fraction of the salaries and perks enjoyed by the editor of the Daily Mail or Sun. Why is it OK for them and not for politicians and bankers?"
Well Mr Dacre and Mr Dinsmore, whatever you think of their newspapers, preside over successful private-sector enterprises. They have not required taxpayers' money to bail them out. If they fail to produce the circulations and profits demanded, they'll be out quicker than a football manager in the relegation zone.
Hugo Rifkind wrote in the Times yesterday that Westminster folk lived in a bubble. How right he was. Every day that passes produces more evidence that politicians are totally out of touch with the real world.
For people in the real world, talk of a growing economy is as comprehensible as the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner translated into Serbo-Croat. The fact that Chinese or Russian or Gulf zillionaires are buying up posh pads in Kensington is irrelevant. Whatever "experts" say, increases of 5, 10 or 30% in the price of a £50 million former embassy are not going to trickle down to the general market. People aren't going to climb the ladder from a three-bed semi in Clapham to Belgravia. And they sure as hell won't be moving up from the two-up, two-down starter home in Leeds.
None of Miller's defenders seems to appreciate that the notion of an MP making a profit of £1.2m or £1.4m on the sale of a "second" home is hard enough to swallow.
That the taxpayer was quite lawfully expected to subsidise the mortgage payments on that home is indigestible.
For the MP then to claims tax relief on higher rates of interest than she actually paid is a real choker.
It's all about perception. If people on benefit can be chased and charged with fraud when they go out and earn a couple of quid an hour doing the neighbour's cleaning, an MP shouldn't be able to get away with taking thousands from the taxpayer. She knew the law, she should have obeyed it; the argument that it was an innocent mistake or an oversight won't wash.
"Oh, m'lud, I forgot to stop claiming my jobseeker's allowance when I started work.." Yes, that would go down well in the magistrates' court.
When everything was going wrong for John Major's Government in its dire post-Maastricht era, ministers kept moaning "We aren't getting our message across." What they couldn't grasp was the idea that the message was coming across loud and clear - and the people didn't like or believe in it.
Well now people don't like the way Mrs Miller has behaved and they don't believe in her perfunctory apology. Snap opinion polls this week may not have been up to the psephologists' gold standard, but results were so overwhelming that there could have been a 25% margin of error and the minister would still have been found wanting. An online petition has more than 160,000 signatures calling on her to go - and the Morning Star reports tomorrow that dozens more petitions have been blocked by the Government.
So, no. This isn't the Press getting shirty because we didn't get our way over self-regulation or rightwing buffoons huffing and puffing because they blame her for the law allowing homosexuals to marry.
It's about behaving decently and, quite simply, not taking the piss.
Recommended reading: "No honour, no vocation, no skill" by Fleet Street Fox
No. Maria Miller is still in office. She says she is devastated that she has let down her Basingstoke constituents and that she has given an unreserved apology for her attitude to the parliamentary inquiry into her expenses claims.
Poor dear.
She may very well believe that she has right on her side, but The Times, Telegraph and Independent were not minded to let her off the hook yesterday - and the Guardian and Telegraph are still on her case in Wednesday's papers. The story is becoming one about the Conservative party rather than one member of it. If she lasts that long, which must surely be doubtful, the big test will come at PMQs this lunchtime when Ed Miliband has to decide whether to try to make hay - and risk blowing open the whole expenses scandal again.
There's been a lot of waffle said and written about how the hostile Press coverage of this story is coloured by the desire for revenge over the Leveson fallout and the legalisation of gay marriage.
What the politicos are failing to recognise is that it isn't just the media who are nauseated by the Miller tale; the whole country is. Here is yet another example of the "boss class" thinking that normal rules don't apply to them. It's as though the expenses scandal never happened.
She can protest her innocence til the cows come home - "I stuck to the letter of the law, I made a tiny accounting error, I have nothing to be ashamed of" and suchlike. But, just as we sniff at energy companies that charge us more while recording huge profits and at bankers who reward themselves with multimillion-pound bonuses, we sniff at Miller's behaviour because we think it stinks.
"Who are you to throw stones and talk of greed?" comes the riposte to the scurrilous inky-fingers. "The Prime Minister earns a fraction of the salaries and perks enjoyed by the editor of the Daily Mail or Sun. Why is it OK for them and not for politicians and bankers?"
Well Mr Dacre and Mr Dinsmore, whatever you think of their newspapers, preside over successful private-sector enterprises. They have not required taxpayers' money to bail them out. If they fail to produce the circulations and profits demanded, they'll be out quicker than a football manager in the relegation zone.
Hugo Rifkind wrote in the Times yesterday that Westminster folk lived in a bubble. How right he was. Every day that passes produces more evidence that politicians are totally out of touch with the real world.
For people in the real world, talk of a growing economy is as comprehensible as the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner translated into Serbo-Croat. The fact that Chinese or Russian or Gulf zillionaires are buying up posh pads in Kensington is irrelevant. Whatever "experts" say, increases of 5, 10 or 30% in the price of a £50 million former embassy are not going to trickle down to the general market. People aren't going to climb the ladder from a three-bed semi in Clapham to Belgravia. And they sure as hell won't be moving up from the two-up, two-down starter home in Leeds.
None of Miller's defenders seems to appreciate that the notion of an MP making a profit of £1.2m or £1.4m on the sale of a "second" home is hard enough to swallow.
That the taxpayer was quite lawfully expected to subsidise the mortgage payments on that home is indigestible.
For the MP then to claims tax relief on higher rates of interest than she actually paid is a real choker.
It's all about perception. If people on benefit can be chased and charged with fraud when they go out and earn a couple of quid an hour doing the neighbour's cleaning, an MP shouldn't be able to get away with taking thousands from the taxpayer. She knew the law, she should have obeyed it; the argument that it was an innocent mistake or an oversight won't wash.
"Oh, m'lud, I forgot to stop claiming my jobseeker's allowance when I started work.." Yes, that would go down well in the magistrates' court.
When everything was going wrong for John Major's Government in its dire post-Maastricht era, ministers kept moaning "We aren't getting our message across." What they couldn't grasp was the idea that the message was coming across loud and clear - and the people didn't like or believe in it.
Well now people don't like the way Mrs Miller has behaved and they don't believe in her perfunctory apology. Snap opinion polls this week may not have been up to the psephologists' gold standard, but results were so overwhelming that there could have been a 25% margin of error and the minister would still have been found wanting. An online petition has more than 160,000 signatures calling on her to go - and the Morning Star reports tomorrow that dozens more petitions have been blocked by the Government.
So, no. This isn't the Press getting shirty because we didn't get our way over self-regulation or rightwing buffoons huffing and puffing because they blame her for the law allowing homosexuals to marry.
It's about behaving decently and, quite simply, not taking the piss.
Recommended reading: "No honour, no vocation, no skill" by Fleet Street Fox
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